Top Agile And Scrum Interview Questions

Let’s start with the top Agile Scrum Methodology interview questions.
Q #1) How long the Scrum cycle last?
Answer: Basically, the Scrum cycle depends on the project size and team size. Team size may
vary from 3 members to 9 members.  Normally, it takes 3 to 4 weeks to complete a Scrum sprint.
On an average, a scrum sprint ends in 4 weeks.
Q #2) What is the scrum of scrums?
Answer: Suppose there are  7 teams working on a project and each team has  7 members. Each
team leads its own particular scrum meeting. Now to coordinate among the teams a separate
meeting has to be organized, that meeting is called Scrum of Scrums.

An ambassador (a designated person who represents team) represents its team in the scrum of
scrums.

Few points discussed in the meeting are:

1. The progress of the team, after the last meeting.
2. The task to be done before the next meeting.
3. Hindrance which the team had faced while completing the last task.
Q #3) Explain the term ‘increment’?
Answer: When the team finishes the sprint, hopefully, they have completed everything they
forecasted. The sum of all the product backlog items which were completed in a sprint is called
increments. This new increment also has the value of increment of the previous sprints.
Q #4) What is Sashimi?
Answer: Sashimi is a Japanese word that means a pierced body. Basically, it is a Japanese dish
that consists of fresh meat or fish, sliced into thin pieces. Each piece is similar in taste when
compared with the other pieces.
Sashimi in scrum methodology means every phase of the software development cycle in a sprint
which includes requirement analysis, planning &  design, development, testing, documentation is
complete or not and the product is ready to be displayed, etc.
Q #5) What are impediments?
Answer: Any hindrance which prevents the smooth flow of work or due to which the team is not
able to perform its task in a better way is what we call ‘impediments’.
Q #6) Explain ‘scrum poker’ or ‘planning poker’ technique?
Answer: Scrum poker, also called as planning poker, is a card-based estimation technique which
is based on a general agreement.
1. To start it, the agile user story is read either by the customer or the owner and the
estimator understands its features.
2. Each estimator has planning cards with different no. on it like 0,1,2,3,5,8 and so
on. These values on the card are ideal days or story points.
3. Estimator select cards based on their estimation by discussing features set by the
product owner.
4. If a common value is selected, it is an estimate, if not they discuss their max. and
min. estimation.
5. This process is repeated until a general agreement is reached.
Q #7) What are the principles of agile testing?
Answer: Some major principles of agile testing are:
 Customer satisfaction
 Bug-free clean code
 Changes are welcome by customer
 Whole team, business people and developers work collectively
 Instead of lengthy documentation, focus on the essence
 It focuses on face to face conversation
 It promotes sustainable development
Q #8) What are the disadvantages of the agile model?
Answer: Some of the disadvantages of using the agile model are as follows:
 Not easy to predict: When you encounter a large project, it is not easy to get an
idea of how much effort will it require.
 If the guidelines given by the customers are not properly grasped, then final
outcome of the project is not as per customer satisfaction.
 Sometimes focusing on design and documentation is not proper
 High-level decisions are under the hand of Veterans, if not combined with non-
experienced ones, freshers have little scope to grasp proper knowledge.
Q #9) When to use the agile model?
Answer: There are some development and methodologies where you can use agile like feature-
driven development, lean software development, crystal methodologies, dynamic development.
Q #10) What is the Release candidate?
Answer: The release candidate is a code /version /build released to make sure that during the last
development period, no critical problem is left behind. It is used for testing and is equivalent to
the final build.
Q #11) In what way does agile testing(development) methodology differ from the other
testing(development) methodologies?
Answer: In Agile methodology, the code is broken into small parts and at a time, only that
particular code is worked or tested. Continuous communication on the particular code part is done
by a team so that the focus is only on that particular code. This makes the agile process more
flexible and focused.
Q #12) Can agile methodology also be applied in other than software testing and
development projects?
Answer: There are several places where agile methodology can be applied in the field of
biochemistry, biophysics, bio-medical or at the place where there is insufficient data, where the
project needs to be completed in a small team, where to work in unknown and there are several
areas.
Q #13) How do you know if you are using agile development?
Answer: Whenever you are using certain things like test-driven development, time-boxed task
board, class responsibilities collaborators, daily stand up meeting, pair programming, continuous
integration, reviews and much more, you will get to know that you are using agile development
Q #14) Explain what is a story point in the scrum?
Answer: It can be considered as a unit to estimate the total efforts required to complete or to do
the particular task or implementing a backlog.
Q #15) What does the X and Y-axis of the burndown chart?
Answer: In burn down, chart X-axis shows working days and Y-axis shows remaining efforts.

Here, in the image blue line depicts the ideal time suggested for completing the project. For
Example, in a project ideally, 28 tasks (efforts) are pending on the starting day of the project.
And the project is scheduled to be completed in 20 days. So, on the 20th day, zero tasks (efforts)
should remain, which means the project should get completed.
On the other hand, the red line depicts the actual task (efforts) given with respect to the days.
Here on day 5, 7 tasks need to be completed as per planning, however, in actual only 4 tasks were
completed.

Thus, it provides proper tracking down of the progress of the project and thereby helps in
improving the efficiency and on-time taken to deliver the project.

Q #16) What are the main roles in the scrum?

Answer:
1. Scrum Team: Scrum team is made by an individual person who works
collectively to achieve a particular task. The team works in a bond to deliver
committed and requested products.
2. Scrum Master: Scrum Master is responsible for the proper execution or working
of the scrum team. Being a servant – leader and a coach, he ensures the proper
productivity of a team towards scrum sprint goal.
3. Product Owner: The product owner has the responsibility to deliver a complete
picture of what to build and to convey that idea to the team.
Q #17) What is a product burndown chart?
Answer: A description in the form of the graph which shows implemented and not –
implemented product backlog is called the burndown chart.
Q #18) What is the sprint burndown chart?
Answer: A graph used to describe no. of implemented/non-implemented sprint in the Scrum
cycle.
Q #19) What is the Release burndown chart?
Answer: The graph used to depict the pending release which was earlier planned is called
Release burn down the chart.
Q #20) What is the defect burn down chart?
Answer: The number of defect identified and removed is represented by the defect burn
down chart.
Q #21) What is the sprint planning meeting?
Answer: A sprint planning meeting is joined by all entities like scrum master, product owner and
whole scrum team where they discuss the priority features of the team and product backlog items.
Q #22) What is a Sprint Retrospective meeting?
Answer: This is mostly the last part of the sprint or may be done after the sprint review
meeting. Scrum master and the whole team participate in it. They discuss ‘ what was good during
the sprint’,’ what was bad’,’ what needs to be improved’. It generally lasts for 2-3 hrs.
Q #23) What do you know about ‘build-breaker’?
Answer: When sometimes developer accidentally commit bug in the software and when such
bug stops the compilation process and generates the warning or failure in the normal execution of
testing, we say that the build is broken and the major priority of the tester is to get back again to
the normal stage by resolving the bug issue.
Q #24) Tell me something about Kanban?
Answer: Kanban is a tool that helps the team to overlook the work ie., its progress. Progress, as
well as the status of your current development story, is perfectly described using kanban and
more accurately it is done by the ‘Kanban board’.
Kanban board allows you to write the whole scenario of your project at a single place so that you
can get a perfect picture of the bottleneck, a task done, workflow progress or basically the
complete status of your project.

Q #25) Describe the places where ‘Scrum’ and ‘Kanban’ are used?
Answer: ‘Scrum’ is used when you need to shift towards a more appropriate or more prominent
process while if you want improvement in running the process without much changes in the
whole scenario, you should use ‘Kanban’.
Q #26) Why aren’t user stories simply estimated in man-hours?
Answer: Estimation of user stories on the basis of man-hours can be done but preferably not.
You won’t be able to concentrate on the quality product to be delivered to the customer.
Moreover, you will concentrate on the cost and budget of the management while using man-
hours.
Instead of that, one can use story points, as it provides the complete idea about both the
complexity of work and required efforts

Q #27) Name three other Agile frameworks?

Answer: Test Driven Development, Feature Driven Development, and Kanban.
Q #28) Should scrum master remove impediments on behalf of the scrum team?
Answer: Scrum master can do that, but he should not. The scrum master should neither over-rule
nor pamper his/her team. Initially, there may be chances of failure, unplanned excursions or dead-
end where the team can trap, here scrum master should support them and show the proper way of
getting out of it. A scrum team should be independent to take its own decision.
Also read =>> Scrum Master interview questions and answers
Q #29) How does agile testing (development) methodology differ from another testing
(development) methodologies?
Answer: In agile testing methodology, the entire testing process is broken into a small segment
of codes and in each step, these codes are tested. There are several processes or plans involved in
this methodology like communication with the team, short strategical changes to get the optimal
result, etc.
Q #30) How would master recommend following-up on action items?
Answer: The best way of doing that is by setting a follow-up of the task/list to be done by the
member pick at team retrospective. The scrum master should collect the information or status of
the action items from the previous retrospective before moving further with the new one and if
any of the action items remain uncovered or untreated, the cause or the reason should be known
to avoid it’s further happening.
Q #31) Which are the top agile matrices?
Answer:
1. Velocity: Tracking your velocity gives you a clear idea about your progress,
capacity, etc. Measurement can be done by the sum of all approved estimates of
the stories.
2. Work category allocation: This factor provides us a clear idea about where we
are investing our time or where to set priority.
3. Defect removal awareness: Quality product can be delivered by active members
and their awareness
4. Cumulative flow diagram: With the help of this flow diagram, the uniform
workflow can be checked, where X-axis shows time and Y-axis shows no. of
efforts.
5. Sprint burndown matric: Tracking on the completion of work along with the
sprint is done.
6. A business value delivered: Business value delivered is an entity that shows the
team’s working efficiency. This method is used to measure, in which around 100
points are associated with each project. Business objectives are given value from
1,2,3,5 and so on according to complexity, urgency, and ROI.
7. Defect resolution time: It’s a process where team member detects the bug and
priority intention by the removal of the error. A series of process is involved in
fixing the bug:
 Clearing the picture of a bug
 Schedule fix
 Fixation of Defect is done
 Report of resolution is handed
8. Time coverage: Amount of time given to code in question in testing. It is
measured by the ratio of no. of the line of code called by test suite by total no. of
the relative lines of code (in percentage).
Conclusion
Agile methodology is designed to complete the task in the shorter time slot, which precisely
satisfies the needs of the client and at the same time scrum is famous for its flexibility according
to the requirements.

In this article, we have touched the top Agile interview questions which are most popular
and frequently asked. This, in turn, will surely benefit you from the point of an interview as
well as brushing your Agile and Scrum knowledge.
All the best !!!